General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, flew to Tel Aviv Sunday to discuss a 10-year military aid package worth some $3.7 billion a year. The pledge of increased American military support came in the midst of an increasingly brutal Israeli crackdown on Palestinians within both the occupied territories and Israel itself

Tuesday marks the four-year anniversary of the US-backed assassination of Libya's former leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and the decline into chaos of one of Africa's greatest nations. In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; by the time he was assassinated, he had transformed Libya into Africa's richest nation. Prior to the US-led bombing campaign in 2011, Libya had the highest Human Development Index, the lowest infant mortality and the highest life expectancy in all of Africa. Today, Libya is a failed state

Putting Out The Syrian Fire: Can Diplomacy Do What War Couldn't?By Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer

As Russian missiles rain down alongside American ones, as ever more groups, nations, and areas are embroiled in the Syrian conflict, as yet more innocent blood is spilled, it's obviously time for international negotiations to finally begin. Diplomacy doesn't promise a speedy end to the almost unfathomable suffering in the region, but it does offer a potential path to a different history, a path away from ceaseless violence and toward the imperfect rule of law

A famous Israeli historian has termed the strategy of killing innocents in the name of anti-terrorism by Israel, as 'Incremental Genocide'. Hindutva fascists are desperate to learn this skill of incremental genocide from their ideological kins, so that they can practice it in India too. Modi's upcoming trip to Israel needs to be understood from this perspective

A Resolution on "ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba" will once again be presented to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 27 October 2015. There is a special significance about bringing the Resolution, overwhelmingly endorsed by the UNGA for 23 consecutive years, to the attention of the world body this time. It is happening after the US restored diplomatic relations with Cuba on 17 December 2014

Intolerance to competing ideologies and systematic cramping of public space is on the rise in the country. The civil society must act swiftly and sternly to uphold the values for which India stands; otherwise the country will be pushed towards more intolerance and religious bigotry, which will result in further compression of the free public sphere

The Indian criminal justice system is a handover from our colonial rulers. Though it has evolved over time to claim itself as restorative and rehabilitative, it is retributive in practice. Societal attitudes towards 'criminals' are not kind and behind the closed doors of our jails lies a murky picture begging for attention and intervention

K Surendran of BJP, one of the many 'leaders' whose only ticket to political glory is his almost-daily nocturnal appearances on TV primetime news, fell into a hot soup after a photo of him apparently munching parotta and beef in a restaurant went viral, making him the butt of massive trolling and online ridicule. He immediately went on defensive mode, saying that it was onion curry, not beef

Modi - Naidu Must Answer, Whose And At What Cost AP Capital City Being Built?By NAPM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chandrababu Naidu, the CM of Andhra Pradesh are to inaugurate the capital city on 22nd of October, spending Rs. 300 crores. At whose cost and what cost, this endeavor is pushed and still being imposed, is a big question. The capital is a game of the capitalists, including real estate developers who are in nexus with the politicians. It being at the cost of the best of agriculture and horticulture which would bring in severe destruction of livelihood and contribute to food insecurity

18 October , 2015

Beef Ban Frenzy Claims Third Life: Now In KashmirBy Countercurrents.org

The Hindtuva fundamentalist led beef ban campaign in India has consumed another life. 18-year-old trucker Zahid Rasool Bhat S/o Ghulam Rasool Bhat of Batengoo in South Kashmir's Anantnag district, who had sustained 70 per cent burn injuries in petrol bomb attack by a violent mob in Udhampur district on October 9, succumbed to injuries in Safdarjang hospital in New Delhi today. Zahid along with another Kashmiri trucker and a policeman were injured when a violent mob had hurled petrol bomb towards their truck and assaulted them on October 9 evening after rumours had spread that three cows were slaughtered. The tests, however, have revealed that the cows had died of food poisoning and had no injuries

Sikhs Protest World Over Against Desecration OfHoly Book And Police Brutality In PunjabBy Countercurrents.org

Sikhs protested world over against the desecration of Guru Granth Sahib 'bir' at Kotkapura and police brutality in which two people were killed in police firing. Protests were held in Canada, UAE, Afghanistan and many other places around the world

Who is going to take up the gauntlet on behalf of the masses. Who would be the new Davids who would confront the Goliaths of our times ? Would it be some ensemble of social movements or a motley combination of anti-system political formations or a reinvigorated and a reenergised revolutionary left in alliance with various people's movements ?

Being on ground it's WE the people of Assam who can defeat these religious fanatics and bigotry politics. Home to a diverse language, communities and ethnicities it's being Assamese that binds us to the feeling of oneness. There would certainly be attempts to taint the peaceful setup of Assam. But, the inhabitants of the state have to be aware of any such polarising acts by saffron brigade or any other bigots

Bush-Blair Planned Iraq Invasion One Year Before The WarWhile They were Publicly Propagating Diplomatic SolutionBy Countercurrents.org

Bush and Blair, the two world imperial leaders, planned the Iraq war one year before the war was launched although they were publicly telling that they were for a political solution of the Iraq-problem. Recently released Hillary-e-mails exposed the document

Why Peace Activists Should Stop Cheering For Russian Bombs In SyriaBy David Swanson

Murder is not moderate. You cannot find "moderate" murderers and engage them to kill extremist murderers. You cannot bomb the extremist murderers without producing more murderers than you kill. What's needed now, as in 2012 when the United States brushed it aside, is a peace process. First a cease fire. Then an arms embargo. And a halt to training and providing fighters and funding by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, and all other parties. Then major aid and restitution, and a negotiated settlement in which, in fact, Russia should be included as it is located in that region of the world, and the United States should not as it has no legitimate business being there

Fair-and-balanced Fox News reported on Wednesday that "Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar al-Assad's soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S." Fox's claim of an imaginary enemy alliance relies on two sources: the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies and an anonymous U.S. official

On October 14th, an "international panel" announced that it was "ready to investigate the deadly US [hospital] bombing", but would need "assurances from Barack Obama and the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, that their governments [would] comply." The US rejected the initiative for the investigation, and instead, on October 15th, sent soldiers to smash upthe bombed hospital with a tank, "destroy[ing] evidence" for the war crimes investigation

This year the rains failed in southern Ethiopia and some 25% of a country of 90 million people are facing acute food shortages in the coming months. This climate disaster, brought on mainly by western industries damage to the environment, has left the Ethiopian government quietly begging the international community for a preliminary food aid package worth $500 million, desperately needed to start feeding over 7 million people

Inequality, one of the contradictions characterizing class struggle in the prvalent system, is a key structural anomaly of the system. The anomaly demands to be identified as an agenda, and that too as a political one. The agenda of inequality and increasing inequality in the present global socio-economic-politicl system is subtly shunned away by the mainstream and often ignored or missed by the stream opposing the mainstream

The Indian left is yet to acknowledge the existence and the political weight of the Indian Unconscious. Obviously, it is far from devising technologies for rewiring it. This is not the place to work out the details of depth political strategies that the left must forge. But the first step would be to acknowledge the problem. It is not simply a matter of new terms and nomenclature. The point is that there has been an elephant in the political room and the left has refused to take notice. This elephant cannot be described by limbs such as false consciousness, hegemony or ideology. That would at best be a superficial description

Global Peace And Security: Mankind Is Traumatized By The Middle East ConflictsBy Mahboob A Khawaja

The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions

Prof. Ramu Manivannan, a preeminent scholar, academician and human rights activist, has been removed from his position of Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration of Madras University and even the department has been closed down for months. Ten students have been suspended from August of this year

who stands with writers,poets and artists of 150 nations against the Fascist Governance killing the greatest Pilgrimage of Humanity which merged so many streams of humanity as Tagore wrote! It is in Bengali to address Bengal!